


Pool of the Earthly Heavens

by Library_Drone



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Atmospheric, Fo4 Song Prompt, Friendship, Gen, Melancholy, Stars, ghoul character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5600149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Library_Drone/pseuds/Library_Drone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short fics about 2 old Ghouls surviving the Commonwealth and finding joy where they can.</p><p>Chapter 1: She drifts in a pool of stars tonight.<br/>Chapter 2: She'll stand guard tonight<br/>Chapter 3: She'll meet Her tonight</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a fo4 song prompt on Tumblr. My song was Calexico -The Book and the Canal
> 
> link to the song -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqCpn7FABqk
> 
> hope you like it guys!

The night was calm in the commonwealth. Quiet, but for the distant rumble of a far off Rad Storm. Even the Raiders and Super Mutants seemed to have taken the night off for once. 

Alice ran a leathery hand over her scalp and looked up at the stars overhead. Her feet drifted through the irradiated water of the lake and she sighed. The stars, she thought, were so much brighter now than they had ever been before the bombs fell.

The lake stretched out before her, a still and quiet mirror of the sky above. Those heavenly bodies brought down to lap at her ankles and warm with the radiation of the water. It was when she could steal away moments like these that she was almost glad to have gone ghoul. 

She slid her rags off of her shoulders and let them fall away as she slid further into the lake. The starry waters lapped higher and higher. Around her knees, her hips, her shoulders. And with a deep breath she slid her head under as well.

She felt almost sacred in that moment as the heavens clothed her. Beautiful.

Before long she surfaced again and let herself float in the quiet. 

There were many things she missed from the old world, but the stars are one of the things worth hanging on for.


	2. Moll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So... I guess this is more than one chapter now?

     Moll tilted her head back to look at the stars as she settled her old pipe wrench against her shoulder and tapped a boot against the old boulder she leaned on. The breeze tugged on the few remaining wisps of her grey hair escaping an old faded headscarf and carried the sound of far off thunder with it. It was quiet tonight, but that didn’t mean she was going to let her guard down.

She was too old to imagine that stillness and safety came hand in hand.

     Alice, the foolish young thing, liked to try to sneak off on nights like this to go wade about in the water. She had yet to actually manage to do it in the century they’d traveled together, but Moll was willing to let her think she was alone. She’d stand watch and let the lass have her moment.

Moll didn’t see the appeal of floating about in irradiated lakes but she supposed that it didn’t matter if _she_ saw it.

      Alice was some 50 years and change younger than Moll. It wasn’t much of a difference in comparison to the 200 years they’d both lived after the great-war, but Moll had always felt so much older than her younger counterpart. She supposed that came of their relative ages before becoming what they were today. To think at that time she’d concerned about her wrinkled skin and grey hair. The leather she had for a hide now would have horrified the self she was then. But 72 year old Moll and 282 year old Moll were not quite the same people. Not much much had fazed her then and even less did now, but looks weren’t something that mattered much in the wasteland. Her friend had never seemed to pick up that hardness, that carelessness. The world hadn’t managed to wear her in just yet.

She heard Alice leaving the water and figured it was time to get back to camp herself. Getting to her feet she took off for camp in a near silent jog. Couldn’t have the kid thinking that she’d been followed.

Moll would never hear the end of it.

     She beat Alice to the camp by several minutes as usual and settled into her bedroll, rolling over and pretending to be fast asleep. Their watchdog Faust barely moving at her entrance. As Alice slipped into camp, all damp and smiling she just gave a small shake off her head.

Crazy kids.


	3. Meetings pt 1 (Moll and Alice)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who the HELL is singing out here?

_“…Chicago way. Had a boogie style that no one else could play.”_

Was that… singing? Really? Singing? Moll peered through the dry, grey, blasted landscape. Who the Hell would be singing out here?

It’d been a 30 years since the bombs had dropped and things were still hell. Rotting, rioting, and what people that survived were scrabbling and squabbling over what little was left. Half the country too irradiated to enter for anyone but… well anyone but whatever the hell you‘d want to call what she’d become. And she doubted it was healthy in the long run for her either.

Good scavving if you were desperate enough to risk it though.

_“He was the top man at his craft….”_

She’d spent the last couple of decades avoiding what smatterings of civilization that had scraped itself together. No body reacted well to face like hers. A little chit chat (human contact. that was a thought) and a bed weren’t worth that kind of trouble.

_“-but then his number came up and he was gone with the draft!”_

So you could understand her surprise to hear singing of all things out here in the glowing boonies.  
Moll readied her wrench and peered around the corner of the ruined building she’d been about to pass.

* * *

   
  Alice reached just a little bit higher

_“He’s in the army now. Blowing revelry…”_

  Just an inch or two more and she’d have reached it.

  Alice had found the perfect spot to hang the charm. It was a little sparkling crystal that would be just beautiful when the sun caught it in the late afternoon sunlight. The old grocers that she was in had been ransacked. Some time ago from what she could tell. The place was still and ugly. Shelves tipped over in some survivors desperate grab for supplies, walls stripped for the copper wiring, and some thirty years of rot and dust. Many places were like this now. So she was going to add just a touch of light to the place.

If only that broken pipe were just a little bit lower.

_“He’s the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B-”_

     A sudden scuffling noise had her falling silent. What was that? A radroach? One of the many packs of dogs that roamed the ruined streets? The building was clear earlier but that was never a permanent reassurance.  
Nothing.  
_______________________________________________________________________________--

 Moll froze as her boots scraped the ground and held still until the girl turned back to what she was doing.

  The girl was standing on an old crate hopping and singing trying to reach a- pipe? Yes, a pipe. Something shone in her hands.  
Mad. She must be. Now the question was variety of mad she was. The girl looked harmless enough but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

One way to find out.

Moll stepped around the corner just as the girl gave another little hop and the box she was standing on collapsed.

 

 

To be continued…


End file.
